LOS ANGELES, Nov. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- US troops are secretly paying money to Iraqi newspapers for publishing news stories in an effort to burnish the image of their mission in the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

    Such articles, written by US military "information operations" members, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers as part of an information offensive in Iraq, the newspaper quoted US military officials as saying.

    Many of the articles, which trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops and denounce insurgents, are presented as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists.

    Though basically factual, the articles present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said.

    Records and interviews indicate that the US military has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines like "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year, according to the Los Angeles Time report.

    The operation is carried out through a Washington-based defense contractor called Lincoln Group, whose Iraq staff often pay dozens to hundreds of dollars to local newspapers for publishing each story from the US troops, it was reported.

    The US effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as US officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in Iraq, said the report.

    Citing the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday the hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" there offered a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate their burgeoning democracy.

    However, the US military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.

    Some said that such operations have moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs -- the dissemination of factual information to the media -- and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda to advance military objectives.

    US law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets, but people said that reports by the foreign press would inevitably influences coverage in US news outlets, given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle.

    "There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.

    A military information operations expert in Washington said that planting stories in Iraqi media maybe not wrong but he didn't believe the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.

    "I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it. I just question whether it's effective," said Daniel Kuehl of the National Defense University in Washington. Enditem